This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Trib editorial ("Science scores a bright light for Utah schools," Our View, Oct. 29) gives praise to Utah eighth-grade students for their relative performance in international tests for science and math.
While credit is merited, it needs to be put into perspective. The comparison was made between a demographically favored state of about 3 million population against entire nations and Canadian provinces, most of which are many time larger.
There are undoubtedly subsets (cities, states, providences, etc.) of these large entities with populations greater than Utah's and with test scores much higher than their national average and perhaps higher than that of Utah students.
It is simply misleading to cherry pick a state with less than 1 percent of a nation's population and compare it against the national average of a country such Germany, Japan or China with a population 400 times larger than Utah's.
Rudi Kohler
Heber City